Vaudeville on "The Family Guy"
This morning’s singing practice is especially arresting. They are singing a song in which they all have contrasting parts. Chris describes the song as being a little like morphine. Not by coincidence the first scene of the day is the scene that has the song at its heart. The working relationships are getting more ‘natural’ every day. The flows of energy between people in the room are feeling much stronger, which in turn makes the work seem to be getting ‘easier.’
Chris takes advantage of the growing confidence to instil slightly more pace into the morning. There is a subtly increased emphasis on moving through the scene work and getting through moments more quickly. With the base that they’ve been slowly building over the previous 4 days there is now a collective desire to really get stuck into the scene work. It’s like the capacity of the group to digest the play is growing massively, and with it the appetite.
After the first scene has been worked through the group breaks into smaller groups to make the most of their time in preparation for the next scene on the schedule. Simultaneously Mark plays the piano with Matt on clarinet, Chris discusses some of the fundamental relationship curves with Julia and Jim, Christen sings into a mirror with her dummy, and Alex meditates on the script sitting by himself, occasionally mouthing lines. It’s a soundscape of singing, discussion and music that is separate, yet deeply and intimately connected; perhaps the kind of soundscape that is entirely unique to rehearsal rooms.
When scene work resumes with the entire cast they are working on a scene that has elements of a ‘play within a play.’ One of the actors asks the question, “Who is this bit for?” He wants to know whether the precise bit he is doing is meant for the actual audience, or one of the other characters in the play, or one of the other character’s characters. Does he ‘know’ he’s performing, or does he think it’s ‘real,’ or is he pretending he thinks it’s for real for the benefit of another character? These are really important questions to the play, and have the potential to become infinitely complex, and for the answers to loop back on themselves. The important point though, is that the actors must play something specific; they can’t play a meta-physical conundrum. There is a lot of work in finding this specific reading to play.
I caught up with Jethro in the afternoon, to see how his work is going. Jethro has worked as Sound Designer on all of the collaborations between Chris and Lally going back a number of years. I started out by asking him what question is uppermost in his mind right now in relation to the show;
“I looking for the overall tone and feeling; broad strokes. I’m looking for the sound journey, the beginning, middle and end of the sound journey. I’m asking what the colour palette is. At the moment it is a dirty rust colour.; old film, greys, blacks, brown.”
I asked him whether he was conscious of a body of work when designing for the collaborations between Chris and Lally, or whether he treated each show as a discrete entity. His first response was that he treated each show discretely, but with some thought forwards that there are definitely connections between previous works and the current work, and a similar feel to some of the worlds.
Finally I asked him whether he was working closely with the composer, Mark. He said that usually the sound designer and composer would work very closely together. But so far on this project they had not because Mark was performing the music live, so there wasn’t quite the need as when all the sound is recorded. He says that he expects to work more closely with Mark as the piece progresses, and that in many ways Mark’s composition has led the direction of the sound design.
Chris’s one word for the day – untangling
Darren’s one word for the day - dust
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